Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1481872
BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM OCT. 22, 2022 31 ENGEL'S ANGLE PATRICK ENGEL Patrick Engel has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since March 2020. He can be reached at pengel@blueandgold.com T he plea was tongue-in-cheek, surely. At least partially. Its mere utterance, though, sums up just how far off course the first half of Mar- cus Freeman's debut season as Notre Dame head coach has veered. Moments after Irish players and coaches cleared the field, blank stares on their faces after a vibe-derailing 16-14 home loss to Stanford, a fan in Notre Dame Stadium's north end zone stands bellowed three words to one of the remaining figures on the turf. That spectator saw former LSU head coach and 2019 national championship win- ner Ed Orgeron, a guest of Freeman this weekend, ambling toward the tunnel. "Save us, 'O!'" the fan yelled. The fact such a line could even be- come material for a joke and the mere existence of cries for help points to a darker start to Freeman's tenure than anyone reasonably predicted. Notre Dame is 3-3 with two home de- feats to teams that have combined for zero other FBS wins this year. Its three- game win streak that seemed to birth an identity is over. The Irish lost at home as a double-digit favorite for the second time this year. Stanford provided a nice path to extend the three-game winning streak. Instead, a Cardinal player did a brief Irish jig on his way off the field while Notre Dame gathered for another glum singing of the alma mater. Most troublesome? The Irish appear to be right back where they were Sept. 10. A confused Freeman left the field that day after a 26-21 loss to Sun Belt Confer- ence opponent Marshall and vowed to be more thorough in auditing how they prepared the other six days of the week. Five weekends later, he's still asking the same questions. Still lamenting execu- tion. Still committing to drill down on it. "It's a lack of execution," Freeman said. "And that's what we've got to eliminate. It's not, 'We should have.' Why didn't we?" Based on the result, Freeman is either without answers or can't disclose them without throwing his assistants and roster under the bus. Or maybe both. What's clear is, at minimum, Notre Dame hasn't turned answers (if he has found them) into long-lasting fixes. It's not as if Freeman just began searching for why. Execution has been his ad nauseam message since that 0-2 start. Yet he and his staff appear to have made negligible progress sharpening the execution, or never made progress that could stick for the final 10 games. If the Marshall defeat did spark changes in the game-day routine or Sunday through Friday preparation, a loss to a backsliding Stanford program should do the same. It should evoke new ways of attempting to correct execution lapses, prompt rip-the-Band-Aid-off moments and lead to reviewing personnel decisions. If that's Freeman's plan, he kept it to him- self and instead committed to the same process he outlined five Saturdays prior. The same one that ultimately couldn't save Notre Dame from another home loss to a less talented team. "I know you guys are going to look for a different answer, but there isn't," Free- man said. "I can't come up with a magic answer. It's the lack of execution. The only way to fix a lack of execution is to go back and study it and say, 'What aren't we doing right? And then you watch the film. And then you say, 'How are we practicing? What do we have to do to make sure we're giving ourselves a better chance to execute on Saturdays?'" Maybe the process is as simple as that. If so, Freeman is still figuring out how to make it more effective than it has been. Six games have revealed a head coach still in search of the right touch. This most recent one hardly indicated he's on the cusp of finding it. As long as that search continues, pre- pare for a second half of the season where few things will feel like certainties. That's a 180-degree pivot from the last five sea- sons, where Notre Dame found ways to win the unexpected white-knucklers that arose against lesser teams but more often ensured they didn't happen. A 42- game win streak over unranked oppo- nents feels like a distant memory. Against Stanford, an offense that ap- peared to find itself and resemble a bank- able asset for 2.5 games put forth its slop- piest half of the season and mustered 14 points, 301 yards and 4.9 yards per play against a defense that ranked 111th, 110th and 122nd in those categories, respec- tively. The Irish turned the ball over twice. "When there's days when your offense isn't executing well, the defense, we have to play perfect," Freeman said. "The of- fense has been doing really well the last couple of weeks when we haven't been playing perfect defensively. But today was a day we needed the defense to play perfect and we didn't." All told, the defense had a fine day — 16 points is 16 points. But far from a per- fect one. That's a lot to ask, of course. Notre Dame doesn't seem to have trouble identifying the issues that have ailed it. Nor did Freeman or his players say there were new wrinkles from Stan- ford they hadn't seen on film. Freeman didn't lament specific play calls and propped up his coordinators' efforts. He insists it is all about coaching players to do their jobs. "My challenge is to make sure we're calling the things that we're execut- ing," Freeman said. "And if we're calling things we're not executing, we've got to look and figure out why." And more importantly, figure out how to turn the "why" into change that sticks. ✦ Marcus Freeman and Notre Dame have lost two home games to unranked teams this year. PHOTO BY CHAD WEAVER Same Questions After Another Home Dud